VPNs, or virtual private networks, are everywhere. If you’ve spent any time at all on YouTube, chances are you’ve seen an ad selling VPNs — there have been literally hundreds and thousands of them.

We test and review VPNs so you don’t have to — but what even is a VPN? The pitch is fairly simple: a VPN can mask your IP address and the identity of your device by routing your traffic through a remote server. Sites and services will see a different IP address to your own, and your internet service provider will only be able to see that you’re connected to a VPN server, rather than what sites you’re visiting. That means a VPN can be an important tool to keep your data private and secure, especially if you need to connect to an unsecured network. If you’re on public WiFi, for example, you can’t be sure what they’re tracking while you’re surfing the internet. With a VPN, there’s an additional layer of privacy — as long as you make sure the VPN provider can be trusted. But a VPN should not be the end of your security journey. Complex passwords, multifactor authentication and other security basics should be way higher on your checklist.

Another commonly advertised feature of VPNs is evading geoblocking techniques that companies use to prevent you from accessing certain content. Because you’re connecting to a remote server, a VPN can effectively change your location, allowing you to watch another country’s Netflix content or, say, watch Doctor Who on the UK-only BBC iPlayer. If you’re in the EU, it can allow you to access sites that are otherwise blocked due to the region’s strict data protection regulations. In the past, VPNs have even been used to skirt political firewalls put up to censor online access.

With many VPN makers making sweeping claims about military-grade encryption, digital invisibility and lightning-fast speeds, it’s tough to know what’s true and what’s marketing hype. That’s why Engadget started evaluating VPNs in 2023, looking at a number of factors such as security, speed, latency, usage limits and price. And while we don’t expect to ramp up to more VPN testing until 2025, our best VPNs guide will continue to be the home base of our coverage. In the meantime, this is our current VPN testing methodology.

Background checks

Before we install or sign up for a service, our work begins by investigating each product’s lineage. We reference privacy policies, transparency reports and security audits that are publicly available, and note the security specs of each service. We also look into each company’s history of security incidents like data breaches. We rely on some pre-existing academic work from bodies like Consumer Reports, VPNalyzer and others when looking into security specs.

Setup

The next step in our review process involves a close look at what it’s like to get set up on the VPN. This involves looking at the various platforms each VPN supports, from certain web browsers to Smart TVs, to better understand how it can be used. We also look to see just how easy it is to get started on a new VPN. Some will automatically connect to a secure server every time you use your device, while others make you jump through hoops to stay signed in. We seek to understand how user friendly and intuitive these VPNs can be.

Usage limits

While many VPN providers promise that their service works across every device all the time, there is often small print to consider. We scan the terms of service for each of the company’s plans to understand what they are offering. Is there a limit to the number of devices a user can have connected at once? Is there a “fair use” limit that kicks in after a certain amount of traffic? Are advanced features multi-hop connections locked to only the priciest plans? We investigate all of these things so you don’t have to. We also conduct many of our more specific tests at the same time, which allows us to verify companies’ claims about simultaneous device use.

Speed and latency

The first step in testing speed and latency is to ascertain the baseline of the connection before connecting to a VPN. We then use the “quick connect” feature on VPN apps to connect to the “fastest” provider available when testing internet speed. Once connected, we run internet speed tests by Ookla and ping tests with meter.net. When relaying these results, we will note the average speed and ping across these results, as well as the difference between that average and our baseline when not connected to a VPN.

Geoblocking

We test all VPNs from within the US. To check that a service is able to effectively avoid geoblocking, we connect to a Canada-based server and attempt to access content on Netflix that is only available to users in that country. We then connect to a Hong Kong-based server to attempt to watch a news livestream on a YouTube channel that is exclusively available to users in that region. Finally, we conduct a gaming test by playing on servers in the United Kingdom. We’re looking to see not only if we can access the same content from all these servers, but also to test for lag or any other headaches that you could run into when using something.

Checking for leaks

A DNS leak happens when your device sends an unencrypted DNS query outside of your VPN service’s encrypted tunnel to an ISP’s DNS servers. This effectively nullifies the use of a VPN in the first place by allowing third parties to see and potentially track your browsing activity and IP address.

A WebRTC leak is an issue that can occur in modern web browsers that can similarly expose your personal IP address to a website you’re on. While you can avoid this by configuring your browser to not send such data, a VPN should be able to prevent this from happening.

To check for both of these issues, we use publicly available tools such as NordVPN’s IP address lookup tool and ExpressVPN’s leak tests before and after connecting to a VPN and make sure neither fault is occurring.

This week, we had 42 sessions and 97 speakers at our GamesBeat Next 2024 event. And many of them spoke around our theme of getting the game industry back to growth. Thank you all for coming and listening.

David Glass and I came up with the theme months ago on the hope that the game industry, which has seen 2.5 years of layoffs (with 33,000 jobs eliminated), would return to growth. But during the course of the day-and-a-half event, I began to realize what it really meant.

During the Game Changers session (where we ended our conference with the announcement of the list of the top 25 game startups), Lightspeed partner Moritz Baier-Lentz asked me for a prediction of the future. And I said I wanted the game industry to get back to balanced growth.

Balanced growth

That means, of course, a return to revenue growth, where the numbers have good percentage growth year on year. I think we’ll easily accomplish that with big games in 2025 like Grand Theft Auto 6 coming from Rockstar Games. But that’s not all we need.

We also need balanced growth. If we grow industry revenues in 2024 and we also see layoffs of more than 13,000 people in gaming, that’s not balanced growth. Next year, we want to the see the industry return to revenue growth. But we also want to see hiring exceed firing. Amir Satvat, the quant who works for Tencent by day and helps people find jobs in his offtime (he has helped 2,800 people find jobs through his free online resources), has amassed so much data around job seekers that he can predict how the aggregate picture in game jobs is changing.

By December, Satvat predicts that hiring will exceed hiring during that month on a 60-day trailing basis for the first time in years. That’s a significant event and it would be wonderful if the crossover happens.

If there are just a thousand more layoffs this year, Satvat warns that the crossover could be delayed into next year. But in an industry that has 300,000 or so people, we want to see much more than just a return to more hiring. We would love to see the return of talent wars so that the people who want a career in games can make it happen on their terms.

Many of the people at GamesBeat Next were looking for jobs, and so were some of our speakers. In my fireside chat with him, Satvat calculated that more than 10,000 people are actively looking for work now, and 45% of them have been out of work for more than a year. The young folks who are getting out of college now with zero experience up to three years of experience have a 1% to 2% chance of finding a job in the next year. And there’s ageism too. Those 50 and older have the same 1% to 2% chance of finding a job in the coming year. Those figures show that games are a pretty brutal industry. It’s only through Satvat that we have transparency when it comes to job numbers.

We’re all of course fearful and hopeful of the impact that AI can bring to games. Many fear it will take away more jobs. Yet we are just beginning to see its magic happen. Electronic Arts brought EA Sports College Football back this year (after splitting with the longtime licensor NCAA) and it signed up more than 11,000 college athletes for its game. It was able to create the realistic likenesses of those players in the game in just three months, thanks in part to the efficiency of AI creation. Our AI and games panel moderated by Hilary Mason of Hidden Door focused on ethical AI.

I think we must embrace the future and use the technology that comes our way. Gaming has always done that, and it has usually benefited both developers and consumers. We don’t want to reject new technology because it might make the old ways of doing things obsolete. We want to see how it can enable young people to break into the industry more easily, or improve someone’s chances of finding meaningful work.

Balanced diversity

Another place where we need balance is with diversity. When gaming culture reaches its true dominance and the talent war finally comes back, we’ll need everyone who can help. Dametra Johnson-Martelli, corporate vice president of gaming consumer sales at Microsoft spoke with Rachel Kaser at our 9th Women in Gaming Breakfast about breaking into the best companies and remembering you’re there for a reason. You bring a unique perspective that the company; find your voice, throw your ideas out, be vocal and take your shot. You’ll find that you can make a difference.

Our Diversity in Gaming panel, led by Xsolla’s Bridget Stacy, featured similar sentiments from Sheloman Byrd, Jenny Xu and Jessica Murrey as they talked about what raising money is like for people of color in games. Somehow they overcame skepticism and animosity and managed to show their tenacity to overcome the odds and finally raise the money that they needed to get their dreams off the ground.

At our event, Shelby Moledina made a short film, Resting Pitch Face, about what it’s like for women to raise money from gaming VCs, and she made a standing-room-only crowd laugh at the dark comedy. And Amy Hennig and her team at Skydance made me chuckle as they discussed their “no-asshole” policy.

Johnson-Martelli said you’ll spend 90,000 working in your lifetime. Make sure you wind up in a place with the right culture and show people why you belong there. Microsoft’s motto is that when we all play, everybody wins. About 25% of gamers are BIPOC, Johnson-Martelli said, and the game industry cannot afford to forget about them as they desperately look for more players for their blockbuster games.

Balanced technology

Yes, we fear for our colleagues because of AI. And we know there are false gods in the hype cycles that generated a quick buck for those who don’t really believe in what they’re selling. For sure, we want to expose those frauds who take advantage of the cycles and the easily duped.

But as brutal as the industry and the cycles and the frauds can be, gaming is also so rewarding. We also want to make sure that we see real technology put to good use so that it enhances not only our efficiency but our creativity, with the result being that games of the future can ignite the minds of those who play them. If AI works, it means a company with 100 people might get by with only 10. But it also means that one person trying to break into games as an indie could possibly do the work of 10.

For sure, 2025 will have a lot of winners and losers. We saw solid growth this quarter in the results for Microsoft’s Xbox division and Electronic Arts’ earnings. But there are companies struggling out there, like Ubisoft, and it has more than 19,000 workers who are facing cost reductions. The picture is going to be mixed for a while, and we can only hope that those who see the way make the right decisions because there is so much at stake among those who are following them into battle.

And finally, as we noted in our sessions with Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, and Neal Stephenson, the author of Snow Crash who coined the term the “metaverse,” we also want to see creativity and a return to the growth of our imaginations. Like these visionary seers, I want us to hear that word “metaverse” and think not of all the scams and duds that happened along the way, but the hope is that someday it will be a reality.

The metaverse should be a spatial expression of the internet, according to Stephenson and Sweeney, and the only way to build it is with open technology, not taxed by platforms that contribute nothing. And then it will help games, entertainment and all of the digital world grow to the next level.

Thank you

I don’t want to come off sounding like a carnival salesman. But we’re so glad you came and we hope you’ll come back.

A total of 577 people came through our event in the day and a half at the lovely Convene meeting place in San Francisco. That was more than the 550 who came last year, even though it has been such a tough year for game people. That means a lot to us.

Thank you all for coming. We appreciate your support and we like to pay it back. We had the support of generous sponsors, and we supported those in our GamesBeat community who needed discounts or free tickets to get into GamesBeat Next for free. We gave speaking roles to people who needed jobs. And I was thrilled to see so many people networking in our central spaces at the event at all hours of the day. We hope that good things come from that.

We hope that one day your startup or company could be one of our Game Changers one day and wind up on the Nasdaq Tower in Times Square. Or maybe show up on the Nasdaq Tower a second time as you launch your initial public offering.

We can dream. See you at the next one.

Fortnite is rewinding the clock once again. After a bit of teasing, Epic is about to kick off a new period in the battle royale game dubbed The Remix: Chapter 2 — and it’s not only looking back in time, it’s integrating music in an ambitious new way.

The launch of the remixed season was preceded by a musical event, similar to the Eminem concert that teased a new era for Fortnite. This time around, Snoop Dogg and Ice Spice took the stage — both in the game and IRL at Times Square in New York — and once the season kicks off, the musical aspects will go a step farther.

As the name implies, the new mini season brings back many of the characters, gameplay elements, and locations of the game’s second chapter, which launched in 2019. Chapter 2 was notable in particular because it erased the original battle royale map to start over fresh for the first time. (The Chapter 2 map itself would be swapped out in 2021 when it flipped over in dramatic fashion.) The month-long event will change things up weekly, with new elements themed around a different musical artist. Snoop Dogg is up first, followed by Eminem, Ice Spice, and culminating with Juice WRLD.

The remixed version of Chapter 2 begins on November 2nd and will run through November 30th, with Epic teasing a “finale” event to wrap things up. It’s also introducing a new cosmetic item: kicks, so that you can put a pair of Nikes on Peely the banana.

I am more excited about the Samsung Galaxy Ring than any other recent new product from a big tech company. Surpassing my interest in the Apple Vision Pro as a product that people will actually find a purpose for, the Galaxy Ring has found a place in my daily routine for one very simple reason: I don’t like wearing a watch all the time.

Samsung is onto something here with a device that fits into its health and wearables ecosystem in a very interesting way. Down to the core, the Galaxy Ring takes the health smarts of the company’s great range of smartwatches and crams them into a tiny ring. There are some health features the Ring can’t provide that the Galaxy Watch can, but it covers the bases; heart rate, body temperature monitoring, sleep and steps. For me, the best feature is its sleep tracking, particularly because it’s much more comfortable to have a ring on my finger in bed instead of a smart watch.

Lawyers hired by MrBeast to investigate claims that his former co-host groomed a teenager have concluded that the allegations were “without basis”, the star YouTuber has said.

Ava Kris Tyson stopped working with MrBeast in July after other YouTubers accused her of sending inappropriate messages to a minor, reportedly then 13, when she was 20.

At the time, Tyson apologised for her “past actions”, but said her behaviour never “extended beyond bad edgy jokes” and denied ever grooming anyone.

The alleged victim – who was named online – also defended her, saying the claims were “massive lies” and that they had never been “exploited or taken advantage of”.

MrBeast, 26, real name Jimmy Donaldson, hosts the largest channel on YouTube, with 325m subscribers, and is known for making videos of stunts, challenges and acts of philanthropy.

Tyson, 28, who last year came out as transgender, has appeared regularly on the channel since it was launched in 2012.

After the initial claims in July, MrBeast said he was “disgusted” by the “serious allegations of Ava Tyson’s behaviour online” and “opposed to such unacceptable acts”.

On Friday, he shared a letter on X from Quinn Emanuel Urqhart & Sullivan LLP, the law firm he hired to conduct an investigation into the claims.

The letter said the firm had conducted 39 interviews with current and former employees of MrBeast’s company and reviewed over 4.5m documents collected from mobile phones, e-mails, and a variety of messaging platforms.

“Allegations of sexual misconduct… between company employees and minors are without basis. The allegations were soundly rejected, including by alleged victims,” it said.

It added that allegations the company had knowingly employed “individuals with proclivities or histories towards illegal… conduct” were “similarly without basis”.

The letter said some “isolated instances of workplace harassment and misconduct were identified” and that, once informed about them, the company had taken “swift and appropriate actions”.

Following the publication of the letter, the alleged victim of Tyson’s behaviour said again that the claims were “completely false”.

“People used my name to make very serious allegations and claims without ever speaking to me,” they said.

“It was incredibly difficult having my name thrown around in a public forum without being given the opportunity to share the truth.

“The private investigators reviewed all my [direct messages] and interactions with Kris.

“I was not groomed. These were false allegations made up by other people with my name thrown in them.”

Responding to the initial allegations in July, Tyson apologised for her “unacceptable social media posts, past actions, and to those who may feel betrayed by how I used to act online”, but added: “I never groomed anyone”.

“To lump these two factors together to create a narrative that my behavior extended beyond bad edgy jokes is disgusting and did not happen,” she said.

“I have learned that my old humor is not acceptable. I cannot change who I was, but I can continue to work on myself.”

Connections is the latest puzzle game from the New York Times. The game tasks you with categorizing a pool of 16 words into four secret (for now) groups by figuring out how the words relate to each other. The puzzle resets every night at midnight and each new puzzle has a varying degree of difficulty. Just like Wordle, you can keep track of your winning streak and compare your scores with friends.

Some days are trickier than others. If you’re having a little trouble solving today’s Connections puzzle, check out our tips and hints below. And if you still can’t get it, we’ll tell you today’s answers at the very end.

How to play Connections

Hints for today’s Connections

We can help you solve today’s Connection by telling you the four themes. If you need more assistance, we’ll also give you one word from each group below.

Today’s themes

• SEEN IN A KITCHEN
• GROUP OF ADVISORS
• CORE EXERCISES
• KIDS OF EARRINGS

One-answer reveals

• SEEN IN A KITCHEN – COUNTER
• GROUP OF ADVISORS – BOARD
• CORE EXERCISES – BOAT
• KIDS OF EARRINGS – CHANDELIER

Today’s Connections answers